Boortz is pointing to an impressively craptacular display of ignorance this morning, an opinion piece by one Paul Heise, Ph.D. in economics. Heise is also professor emeritus at Lebanon Valley College.

I swear. If you ever put together a committee to make an important decision and you can’t afford one more learning experience…it absolutely, positively has to get done right…but you can’t afford the luxury of an individual making the decision — gather together everyone on that committee with impressive letters after their names, and kick them the hell off. Eckspurts, eckspurts, eckspurts. All the poorly-thought-out prejudices of normal people, with none of the accountability or righteous stigma.

Seldom correct but never in doubt.

The era of limited government is ending in a crash. We subjected those limited-government theories to the market test and, like President Herbert Hoover’s theories, they failed.

The idea that we can limit government and depend on markets alone to allocate resources and income in a just and efficient manner led us to a world of multiple economic crises. The word “depression” is back in the economist’s vocabulary.

From President Ronald Reagan to the present, the free-market ideology was tried and simply did not work. The most telling example of resulting wasteful injustice is the crisis in our banking system. Banks are failing, and people are losing their homes and savings because of the deregulation where government did not do its job.

Right, Paul. Because as we all know, if we want an example of private industry that is completely untouched by government regulation, we should all lay our peepers on banking and especially, within that, home loans.

Seriously. We have all kinds of folks running around, as free and as able to vote as you and me, who are in a big rabid slobbering hurry to point out the failures of the capitalist system. And, every now and then they find a good example upon which to stand, like Paul Heise here with the banking “crisis.” Before that it was our health insurance system. And then our tort system. And the way we educate our children.

Hey, question: How come these failures of the capitalist system always seem to be capitalist-marxist hybrids? And could someone explain to me why it always seems to be the case that, if you trace back the histories of these various industries, back to the day someone said “Hey! Let’s put a little bit of Marxism in here that’ll make everything okay!”…and then go back a year further…things, back then, were working pretty much okay?

I mean, not that anyone at the time was saying so. But you go back in time to the days when the purchase of gasoline was a purely market-driven exercise, compare that state of affairs to what we have going on today — you get a little nostalgic, huh?

Back when there were no HMOs and you just handed the doctor a ten dollar bill for birthing your child…or maybe gave him a couple of chickens…he made house calls. Anytime.

Then the Economic Recovery Act of 1981 encouraged savings and loans to invest in commercial real estate and high-risk loans to developers, casinos and ski resorts and in complicated financial instruments about which they knew nothing. That, of course, quickly brought on the much larger savings-and-loan crisis.

Not a single word about the Community Reinvestment Act or the September 2005 revisions thereof, linked by some analysts — using exactly the same logic Heise uses about Reagan-era deregulation — to the current sub-prime lending debacle.

Banks are not like other corporations in a private-enterprise economy. They have the power and privilege of creating money and lending it to people. But that requires them to be trustworthy and prudent, something we cannot trust them to be by themselves.

Riiiiiiight, Paul…everybody’s noggin swivels at breakneck speed, toward Congress, when we’re sniffing around for trustworthiness and prudence. Good one.

This is why I want to build a damn twenty-foot wall. Our society has become so developed and mature that we’ve now hit a point where every little thing we do is a mixture of capitalism and socialism. Therefore, any hitch in the giddy-up anywhere, large or small, is a convenient soapbox for whoever wants to bash government oversight or the free-market transactions the oversight is supposed to oversee. So Heise here is able to blame capitalism for the banking crisis. If the problem were to be fixed tomorrow, he’d be able to credit the object of his undying affection, government regulation. The facts don’t have to back him up anywhere on this. He makes it look like that’s the case, but it isn’t. He’s just casting blame in one direction and credit in the other, to serve his pre-existing agenda of bigger government.

If we had a wall, people could exercise free trade on one side of it and a nanny-state government on the other side of it. I wish for it longingly whenever I read tirades like this. We know, for a fact, that government is made possible because of the free trade. It is not subject to dispute. If ever it is, just say a word or two about putting a measly dent in the business taxes, and the nanny-state people will be at your throat. So we all agree — under the right circumstances of discourse, anyway — business is the host, government is the parasite. Government cannot exist without business, and therefore, without free trade.

Is free trade made possible by government? I doubt it. I don’t think that’s in dispute either. But if it is, let’s go ahead and built that twenty-foot wall and see which side does better.

The idea that we can limit government and depend on markets alone to allocate resources and income in a just and efficient manner…

…more perfect union, establish justice…domestic tranquility…provide common defense…general welfare…secure the blessings…of liberty…

Nope! Don’t see it. “Allocate resources and income in a just and efficient manner” isn’t in this copy of my Constitution. Maybe there’s some other version out there. Man — I’d just love to go back in time and watch Hamilton, Jay, Jefferson et al debate that one. “Point of order, Mister Chairman, before we sign this new Constitution it seems to me there ought to be a few words about allocating resources and income in a just and efficient manner.”

Professor emeritus Heise…dude…if it belonged in there, they would’ve put it in.

Gah. This isn’t that complicated. The guy isn’t talking economic cause-and-effect, he just likes big government. He’s a big government bigot. Neal Boortz says he feels sorry for the economics students at Lebanon Valley College. I agree.

Thing I Know #183. When an education has given you the ability to dismiss ideas more quickly, it’s not really an education.

Little by little, government is trying to assert control over our everyday lives, thanks to liberals, moonbattery, and nannyism. Europe is about ten steps ahead of us, but American liberals are scurrying to catch up.

Van Helsing at Moonbattery notes,

One of the more disturbing aspects of 1984 is the way the government would attempt to control our thoughts by deleting words from the language. More disturbing still is the way real-life bureaucrats have followed suit.

The Justice Department wants the word “prostitute” removed from the national vocabulary, and “persons who sell sex persistently” will be used instead. A Justice Department spokesperson said,

“We just wanted to remove the stigma of the label ‘common prostitute’. It’s been around since 1824, so it was a bit outdated. It just wasn’t really helpful to label people.”

People are labeled, regardless. It doesn’t change the act of prostitution if you take away what it is called. But I guess I’m missing the point. It’s just another way to exert control over the general population.

The NY Post has a story today about a student who received an F — and is suing Columbia’s nursing school.

Nicholas Perrino was kicked out of the Ivy League institution’s School of Nursing for missing an exam, and now he is suing to get back in.

“I should have went to Yale,” moaned Perrino, who is representing himself in the case.

The 27-year-old Illinois native said he was working toward two master’s degrees last summer, when his grandparents became gravely ill, forcing him to take a few days off.

He told his instructors he would be absent for a skills exam and tried to arrange a makeup, Perrino claims in documents filed June 15 in Manhattan Supreme Court.

Instead, he says, the school failed him in the course - part of a fast-track master’s program.

Filing academic grievances and appealing to the Columbia provost got him nowhere, he said, and he was withdrawn from the School of Nursing.

“It’s insane,” Perrino said. “It’s not like I killed someone.”

Perrino is asking a judge to remove the “F” from his transcript, reinstate him at the school and reimburse tuition costs for classes he has already taken.

I would lambast Nicholas Perrino for this, but honestly, what do you expect? You can’t use liberal propaganda day in and day out, brainwashing students with “multiculturalism” and “tolerance” seminars and have an overall nanny state without a good number of students actually swallowing the liberalism and eventually, having it come back to bite you in the you-know-where.

Although, just for fun, let’s talk about Perrino. He not only wanted the F removed, but he wants to be reimbursed tuition costs and be reinstated?! Good Lord. Yet he’s moaning, “I should have gone to Yale!” Oh, you poor little Ivy League kid! You know, getting an F sucks and all, but if you had time to notify your professors before you missed a few days, then couldn’t you have done the work before you left, and not after? And he was on a fast-track program, so that means, well, missing a few days can be monumental, which I’m sure he knew.

It was a choice he had to make, an admittedly tough one: visit my ailing grandparents (this is assuming he is being 100% truthful, mind you), or potentially fail. Thing is, a professor does not have to honor you if you miss class if you took the time to notify him and didn’t do the work in advance. It’s a risk you take. Sometimes, it is school policy (I discovered that one myself once) and you have to go see higher powers, which, I know, he said he did. But all the same — miss class, risk suffering the consequences, even if there is a very good reason for you to be absent. It’s the chance you take and a choice he made.

He has to now deal with the consequences of the choice he made, something liberals simply do not understand.

And the far-reaching effects? Will this make college professors a little bit more nervous to hand out Fs for fear that a disgruntled student will sue? Who knows? But that doesn’t matter to Perrino.

He’s following his dreams!!

Cereal is probably one of my favorite foods. I know that sounds weird, but my dream pantry would probably have the entire cereal aisle at Winn-Dixie. I never get tired of it. With the exception of wheat cereals and those weird “organic” cereals, I could eat any cereal over and over and over again.

This probably goes back to when I was a kid. I loved sitting there with my Rice Krispies, listening to them “talk” to me, like the three elves (named Snap, Crackle, and Pop) said they did on the commercial. I wasn’t as big a fan of Fruit Loops, but I loved Toucan Sam, and the leprechaun from Lucky Charms… well, I loved all the cereal commercials, with kids chasing them around to get these great cereals. It used to be that cereals were considered part of a wholesome and complete breakfast. Not by itself, of course, but the commercials would show these breakfasts with toast, bacon, eggs, orange juice, and a bowl of said cereal.

Now, moonbats are taking nannyism to a new level, and are going after Toucan Sam, who has been around since 1963, and Snap, Crackle, and Pop, who have been around since 1933. The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) wants the mascots done away with.

Hannah Storm from CBS’s The Early Show crowed about this victory over children’s cartoon characters:

“Well, that’s a great idea Nancy, because you can’t even take your child to the grocery store because they’re clamoring for the products with characters on them. When are we going to see them disappear?”

The CSPI, along with Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC), and two Massachusetts parents have threatened to file a lawsuit against Kellogg’s to get rid of the characters, and Kellogg’s in turn has decided to limit those commercials during children’s shows.

Remember Saturday morning cartoons? Those commercials were a perfect match. I guess moonbats would prefer PSA’s about safe sex practices, and tolerance for ways different than our own, like homosexuality and global jihad wars. They could sandwich Trojan Man commercials right in between them.

The CSPI feels that because cereals contain sugar, that means that they are unhealthy. They don’t seem to understand that if kids remain active, as they used to be growing up, that won’t matter. Kids are growing, they are full of energy, and no one needs to be freaking out over the fact that a bowl of cereal has some sugar in it.

Perhaps if parents didn’t allow their children to have every game console underneath the sun, along with their own personal TVs and computers, and made them go outside and play, be active, we wouldn’t see so much childhood obesity. Maybe it is the parent’s decision what the child does or doesn’t eat, and none of the CSPI’s damn business.

Also, Ms. Hannah Storm, it shouldn’t matter if your kids are “clamoring over” these cereals with cartoon characters on them. If you don’t want them to eat them, you say NO, and that’s the end of the story. If you are unable to do that, and give in every time your kids whine that they want something, you shouldn’t be a parent. That leads to what we called “spoiled brats” when I was a kid — what a shocker!

And what about kids’ snacks with cartoon characters on them? Go down the snack aisle and you’ll see all kinds of snacks with Spiderman, the Disney Princesses, and all kinds of cartoon characters on them. Will they go after those next? Will all children’s foods have to be sold to us in identical, plain packaging because parents can’t be trusted to say no to their kids if they feel something is unhealthy?

Slippery slope, slippery slope…

If we let radical left-wing groups like the CSPI continue to run free unchecked, we will truly see what a fascist nation is like. Funny how leftists are crowing about how George Bush is a fascist, when the nanny state they want to implement is exactly what will lead to that.

Hat Tip: NewsBusters

I couldn’t help but snicker when I read these two headlines on The Drudge Report:

CNN and Wolf Blitzer hosted the Democratic debate last night, with the usual puffball soft questions, designed to let it as obvious as possible how much each candidate hates our troops, democracy, and America. Pull out of Iraq now! Socialize, socialize, socialize! We must submit to the UN!

One of the best parts (for me, anyways), was when Hillary Clinton disagreed with John Edwards about the global war on terror being a “bumper sticker slogan” because… she’s a New Yorker , and has seen first hand the effects of terror.

Since when is Hillary Clinton a New Yorker?! Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t she have to purchase property in New York in order to hold a Senate seat there because she isn’t a New Yorker? And does this mean that those of us not in New York are unable to comprehend how horrific 9-11 was?

Then there was John Edwards’ line, “I don’t know if I know what a rich person is!”

Gee, John, could it be someone who spends $400 on a haircut, and then an additional $225 at a spa and salon called the “Pink Sapphire” in “services”? Or maybe someone who made their living chasing ambulances and charging ridiculous fees pretending to be the advocate for the little guy?

Only two candidates — Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel — had the guts to mention that Clinton and Edwards both voted for the war initially.

At the end of the debate, each candidate was asked what they would do in their first 100 days of office. John Edwards said he would travel the world to “re-establish America’s moral authority” — because, ya’ know, John Edwards just has so many morals! And the first 100 days as president of America should not be spent in… America!

Clinton and Obama both said bringing the troops home from Iraq, although Obama added in national health care. Hillary didn’t need to, because we all know how she feels about health care.

Kucinich had the realistic goal of “reshaping the world for peace” and ending ALL nuclear weapons, everywhere! After he’s done with that, he and Miss America will braid each other’s hair and have a pillow fight.

Other responses included a $40k a year minimum wage for teachers (Richardson), and more ending the war in Iraq (Biden).

Some oddball answers were “restoring constitutional rights” to the country (Dodd), and not actually ending the war in Iraq, but simply reminding congressional leaders that they should (Gravel).

Funnily enough, although Shrillary said she’d pull out our troops now, she still refuses to admit that her vote was wrong. Whatever’s most popular at the time, eh, Hillary? Oh, and she also mentioned her husband, saying, “Bill Clinton, my dear husband, would be sent around the world as a roving ambassador.” Ugh.

Each candidate also said they’d get rid of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy in the military as well.

Maybe next time, the Democrats will actually get asked real questions… like whether John Edwards prefers cherry or strawberry lip bloss better.

Maggie’s Farm gives us a glimpse into the future of New York City under RINO Mayor Mike Bloomberg:

The Mayor’s approval rating of 76% has been largely due to his efforts to safeguard city residents from tobacco smoke, trans fats, cars, guns, and other ills with which the ignorant masses are too stupid to deal with on their own. He seeks to build on this foundation with his ambitious new program, entitled “A City That Really Cares.”

This futuristic iniative would put into place a 1,000 police force charged with enforcing new requirements such as: